Debate contribution: Domestic Violence Cases: Court Delays
Debate contribution by Mrs Naomi Long on .
- MLA
- Mrs Naomi Long
- Party at the time
- Alliance Party
- Date
- 1 December 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution (made as a minister)
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Domestic Violence Cases: Court Delays
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5269164
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Tackling delay is one of the biggest challenges facing the criminal justice system and has been identified as a key priority by me, as Minister, and the Criminal Justice Board and justice agencies.? The speed with which domestic violence cases progress is of huge importance to victims, witnesses, the accused and, indeed, their families and the wider community.?The delivery of the speeding up justice programme is a Programme for Government commitment that supports its safer communities priority.? The programme is a joint cross-justice collaborative effort, under the direction of the Criminal Justice Board, upon which the senior leaders of the criminal justice system are represented, including me, the Lady Chief Justice, the Chief Constable, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the director of the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunal Service and a number of other senior officials, including the Victims' Commissioner. The programme takes a whole-system approach, focusing on reducing avoidable delay, reducing demand, freeing capacity and facilitating more proportionate and effective responses to offending behaviours. It is also aiming to take advantage of technological developments to improve operational processes and the communication between criminal justice organisations and the public.?Earlier this year, the Department secured £20·5 million of transformation funding to support delivery of the programme. The funding is already being used to accelerate ongoing work in the early engagement and out-of-court disposals projects and is a significant boost to progressing this very important programme of work.
236 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.02 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.77).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.02 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.01 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.01 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.02 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.77 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.02 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.49 |
| Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues | 0.37 |
| Sexism, misogyny, ageism and other equality groups | 0.14 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 14:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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